enterprises, find that trained managers are a necessity if their busi- 

 ness is to succeed. Formerly, when nothing better was possible, 

 the training came through a long apprenticeship and experience in 

 the practical work of the business. Now it is secured through 

 schools .of study, in which principles are taught with sufficient prac- 

 tice to fix the principles well in mind. 



A method for the training of efficient managers is a much needed 

 addition to the institutes. These managers are responsible for the 

 form of organization of their local meetings; for the proper adver- 

 tising of their institutes; the formation of committees; for the prep- 

 aration of the course of study or program that is to be presented; 

 for the selecting of teachers, the number of sessions, the localities 

 in which institutes are to be held, and substantially for the whole 

 work of organizing and conducting the school. If the series of meet- 

 ings are a failure the local managers, first of all, are held responsible. 

 If they succeed, it is largely due to the efforts that they put forth. 



Success from the managers standpoint at present consists in a full 

 house made up of agricultural people, an interesting and instructive 

 program, and a corps of capable teachers. Success in the future will 

 require much more than this. When the county institute is so or- 

 ganized as to meet each month and have auxiliaries in every township 

 and community, which likewise hold stated meetings; when it will 

 own a farm, stock-breeding barns, plant-improvement plots, and de- 

 monstrate the value of methods by practical tests, and when lec- 

 turers will be employed by the year, at least one for each county in 

 a state, the position of the institute manager will be wholly different 

 from what it is to-day. He will be a paid official and will need a 

 kind of training that the average manager does not possess; a kind 

 of equipment that can only come from the study of science and from 

 experience in work of experimentation as it is now being conducted 

 by the best agricultural experiment stations of the country. The 

 local manager is destined to be the most important factor in the in- 

 stitute work in the future a superior man, thoroughly educated 

 and trained. 



The line of development in institutes is even now in the direction 

 that I have indicated, and it is likely to be on us as a living question 

 before we are prepared, unless we begin now to educate men for the 

 new duties which the developed system will impose. We are now 

 but in the kindergarten stage of the institute idea in education. The 

 increasing needs of men will demand that it be perfected, and its 

 progress toward this perfection can only be by adding to its power 

 to impart valuable information and by extending it so as to be in 

 some form or other within the reach of every citizen every day in the 

 year; in other words, to make it highly educational and constantly 

 and universally useful. To hasten that day, training schools for in- 

 stitute managers are a necessity. 



